Water, Water, Everywhere and Only a Few Quintilian Gallons to Drink

Our bodies can do without water for a short time. Deprived of H2O, dehydration takes over, we dry up, then die. Down through the ages, if you put it in a nutshell, the way we gathered water is a bit of a misnomer.

When we were hunter-gatherers, we drank from pristine streams originating in the mountains. As we became more civilized and built cities close to rivers, we drew water from the river in the same place we emptied raw sewage. We have names for periods of time such as Cenozoic, Mesozoic, Jurassic and so on. I like to call this water retrieval period, “Stupid in Reverse.”

Today most of the population drinks bottled water. Not so many years ago, I would have laughed had someone told me  I would be paying for it. The funny thing about this is, when I tested my tap water against the brand of bottled water we were drinking at the time, the tap water tested superior to the bottled water and by a significant difference. I even wrote a novel, Rising Tide, about a world inundated by water. There was land available but it was definitely at a premium. What it boils down to (no pun intended), is there’s water everywhere–in the ground, the air, oceans, rivers, streams, creeks, mud puddles and pretty much anywhere you can think of (except the arctic which is actually the most arid place on earth with deserts running a close second). So the next time you pick up that cool, clear glass of water, be thankful you’re not drinking from a municipal source a hundred years ago.

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My grandfather built his house in the fifties. He had two men hand dig his well. At about twelve feet in-depth, the volume of water entering the well was too great and they were forced to stop digging. They set the concrete curbs in place and capped it off.

When my mother and father married, my granddad (owned around forty acres) gave my parents a couple of acres to build on. This plot was right beside my grandparent’s so our houses were close together. Once our house was completed, for whatever reason, we tapped into the same well.

That well has never gone dry and still remains just as productive today still supplying two houses.

The down side to having a well that shallow, every now and again, we had to place a ladder into the hole, climb down and remove tree roots. Once I was of age, guess who this task fell to?

I remember the top of the well fractured and fell into the abyss. Death by blunt trauma entered my mind as I would tie a rope around large chunks of concrete and my father and grandfather would pull them to the surface. I had a vested interest in properly tying the rope as I watched the concrete ascend, knowing that if it slipped from the rope, the next contact it made would be my cranium.

I made it through that experience and continued to drink well water for years to come, never giving a thought to actually paying for water. When bottled water became the “thing,” I thought how ridiculous. Now, to make a long story short, I filter my bottle water…how crazy is that? Please remember that was a rhetorical question and no answers will be accepted.

If you want to find out how crazy I can be, then pick up one of my books and that will give you proof positive. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust and wherever it applies, nuts to nuts.

Bus-ted

As I have mentioned (more like over stated), I am currently neck-deep in the slurry that is rewrites, edits, and a third verb which escapes me at the moment, but more than likely is an expletive.

With no prior warning or even an inkling that something may be amiss, random words enter my brain, for what I can only assume is a search for a simple place to hang out. The first one to venture forth and enter my thought processes was the word, “typical.” This single word propagated paragraph after paragraph of ramblings that no sane individual should have to endure.

Unfortunately, as I was bringing last week’s lesson in futility to a close, another word seeking asylum in the recesses of my gray matter decided to bring its sad little self to the forefront. The word in question, “ridiculous,” has kept me chomping at the bit to resolve, in order to resume my necessary work. Thankfully, the time has now come.

How does this grab you? No smoking.

I used to spend my time traveling the country with various trade shows. It was in one of our great cities that I encountered this paradox. It seems that the convention center had been constructed with a roof at its entrance. This overhang extended outward far enough to allow buses, at least two maybe three abreast with five or six in each line, to idle in wait.

This barrage of large-scale transportation occurred each morning to deliver conventioneers and once again, every evening to haul away said conventioneers. In between the a.m. and p.m. deluge, buses would constantly move guests to and from the convention center, usually on a thirty minute schedule.

I don’t know, but it seems to me you took your life into your own hands just crossing this area without donning a hazmat suit, complete with oxygen and a full face-mask.

What I could not understand is that some bureaucrat making six figures that in actuality should have been working a job where only two words are necessary, “paper or plastic,” installed no smoking signs in this area.

Try to imagine, if you dare, a closed in area cocked full of idling buses. These behemoth transports sat spewing the sweet smell of diesel exhaust into the air. Who wouldn’t want to light a cigarette in order to breathe filtered smoke and diesel fumes until they could run the gauntlet of buses to the clean city air just outside of the overhang?

Please, don’t misconstrue what I’m saying. I am a former smoker, but not a nicotine Nazi. I think it’s a deadly habit that takes too many lives and reduces others to an existence fraught with tubes, oxygen, and limited activity.

By the same token, if you’re determined to smoke, then by all means, burn’em if you got’em.

Now that we’ve explored the ridiculous, let us cross that fine line and move on to the ludicrous.

Bottled water.

Not so many years ago it would have been thought an enormous waste of resources to purchase what was readily available. Of course now, at least in my world view, bottled water is the best thing since they made a bottle to put water in. (No sliced bread here.)

I grew up on well water, but as an adult have learned that wells can contain all sorts of chemicals (arsenic) and little nasties (E. coli); therefore, I choose to drink water from le bottle. Of course, I don’t really know where the bottled water, I imbibe originates. For all I know they’re sucking my next case of H2O off the bottom of the Hudson right now. It all boils down to:  you gotta trust somebody sometime.

The brand we drink is tasty enough as far as water goes, but then the company (for what I can only assume to be environmental reasons) started making the bottles with less plastic than it would take to cover a gnat’s rear end. So thin in fact, that if you held the container tight enough to open, once the cap was removed, you would receive a gusher of water in places that no gusher should be.

The bottles also boasted a cute little convex bottom that would allow the container (at its own discretion of course) to wobble precariously or fall over, drenching important documents or maybe even the occasional laptop. If the plastic were any thinner you’d be grabbing a handful of water. Since then the practice has ceased and we have an acceptable chunk of polycarbonate to recycle.

Of course, if a plastic bottle covered with dirt doesn’t send you into delirium tremors you can always toss it into your local landfill, which by the way is why it’s there.

Well, that about does it for this week…… Please, no!…… Not again!…… Sleep…….Sleep…… Sleep…… Another week of head banging resolution!…… Sleep…….Sleep…… What does it all mean?……